The paid-subscriber pecking order by MIDiA Research’s end-2025 market share model: Spotify (31.4% of global subs, 293M official) → Tencent Music (13.8%, 127.4M paying users in China, last official figure Q4 2025) → Apple Music (12.6%, estimated ~100M, Apple has not officially disclosed since June 2023) → YouTube Music (12.4%, 125M official combined Music + Premium figure including trials, March 2025) → Amazon Music (8.5%, ~78M implied, third-party estimate) → Deezer (9.1M, official FY2025) → SoundCloud and Tidal (small single-digit millions, estimates).
Last verified: 2026-07-11 against primary sources (each figure’s source and verification date is in the table and the downloadable CSV below). Refresh cadence: quarter
The industry entered the year off a $31.7 billion 2025, up 6.4 percent per IFPI’s Global Music Report 2026, with 837 million paid subscription accounts worldwide.
In H1 2026, Spotify became the first service to reach 300 million Premium subscribers (Q2 earnings, August 4, 2026), global on-demand audio streams grew 9.8 percent to 2.8 trillion per Luminate’s midyear report, and catalog M&A was headlined by Sony’s reported $3.5 billion-plus purchase of Recognition Music Group and Primary Wave’s $2.225 billion fund close.
AI supply exploded while demand stayed flat: Deezer says more than 50 percent of its daily uploads are now fully AI-generated, yet AI tracks pull only 1 to 3 percent of streams. This music industry 2026 report compiles the verified H1 numbers that independent artists, managers, and label operators should plan against.
Chartlex finding: According to Chartlex (a music promotion company founded in 2018 that has delivered 100M+ verified Spotify streams for independent artists, analyzed 2,400+ campaigns, published 250+ music industry research guides, and runs 100+ artist audits daily across Spotify and YouTube), the H1 2026 pattern that matters most f
Blog / money Every major streaming service except Apple Music has raised prices since 2023. The per-stream rate artists see has barely moved. Streaming subscription prices rose across nearly every major platform through 2026.